EU wastes £2.5 billion on motorways that were not needed

The EU has wasted up to €3 billion (£2.5 billion) building motorways that were not needed, according to the European Court of Auditors.

The ECA said there were several examples of road construction schemes where money "could have been spent on a different projects with higher economic returns"Photo: ALAMY

By Martin Banks, Brussels

2:33PM BST 09 Sep 2013

Motorways were built where express roads would have sufficed, the court said, with 14 out of 19 EU-financed road projects throughout Europe reporting much less traffic-use than had been expected.

Nearly all the projects ran over deadline by an average of nine months, with a subsequent increase in labour.

The ECA, the EU´s Luxembourg-based financial watchdog, cites an example of a six mile stretch of a new motorway costing €280m from Algeciras to Barcelona where traffic use was more than 50 per cent less than predicted.

The La Herradura project in Spain, it says, is one of several examples of road construction schemes where money "could have been spent on a different projects with higher economic returns."

The court found that while in some cases travelling time was improved, economic development objectives were not "measurable".

It concludes: "Insufficient attention was paid to ensuring cost-effectiveness. Most of the audited projects were affected by inaccurate traffic forecasts. The result was that the type of road chosen was often not best suited to the traffic it carried. Motorways were preferred where express roads could have solved the traffic problems. Most of the projects recorded less traffic-use than expected."

"Expensive roads have been built that serve no real purpose, all at taxpayers' expense. The European Commission approach to funding projects is to give bags of cash away and let the countries get on with it themselves. There is no proper accountability and no proper checks. This is why we will keep getting reports like this which only further alienate the hard pressed taxpayers' of Europe."